For a Third Year For Both Middle School And High School
By Monica Carrillo
Run by the local YMCA and Blaine County School District, PIQE (Parent Institute for Quality Education) is heading into its third year of helping parents in the community support their children’s education and will host eight-week sessions in both the Wood River Middle School and Wood River High School for the academic school year.
And with 80% of the participants being Spanish-speaking families, it’s clear this has been a need for the Hispanic community for quite some time.
Nevertheless, this program is open to any parent who is looking to be more involved in their children’s education.
“Sometimes it’s the only time they really feel like they can get this kind of volume of information or this kind of really engaged and personalized conversation in their native language,” said Jason Shearer, executive director at the YMCA.
PIQE is a free eight-week parent-engagement session for middle and high school student families, using an evidence based curriculum and materials. These programs are offered in both Spanish and English, designed to raise the family’s level of concern, give them resources and tools.
Staff from the YMCA call every family in eligible grades to invite them into the program. The program serves about 100 parents per session.
The first year that PIQE was launched, they ran it solely in the middle school before they transitioned to the high school for the second year. This is the first academic year that PIQE will be provided for both Wood River Middle School and Wood River High School.
As of right now, Shearer said the sessions in the high school will be held in the fall while for the middle school, they will be in the spring. The dates, however, are still being worked out.
Regardless, with a high success rate in participation last year, they expect the sessions to have a large turnout.
“The first year, I would say probably 30% of the participants had full attendance, and last year, I would say 90% of participants had full attendance,” Shearer said.
Hailey O’Reilly, a counselor at the Wood River Middle School, told the Wood River Weekly she did training and helped when they had PIQE at the middle school two years ago, and remembered seeing how valuable this program was for parents — especially Spanish-speakers in the community.
“The first year that we did it, and this is my experience, we had both an English speaking session and a Spanish speaking session, and the Spanish speaking session had a lot more participants and was very, very involved in it,” O’Reilly said. “And I would say that that was super valuable, because — I mean, our educational system is so different and understanding you know how to help your kid and how to access the school and how to advocate for them.”
According to DATA USA, Hailey’s Hispanic population stands at 34.7% as of 2022, a 3.2% increase from 2020. Thirty-four percent of Hispanic households are also said to speak little to no English, according to the Idaho Commission on Hispanic Affairs’ latest data profile book.
In another study through the Hispanic Research Center, a national research organization, it says while roughly more than half of all Latino children have a parent with at least some college experience, the parents of 1 in 5 Latino children have not completed a high school degree.
Because of this, it can be hard for many Hispanic families to understand how to get involved.
PIQE, however, is changing that, one year at a time.
“This is critical information for all parents, but this might be only the level of detailed information that some Spanish speaking families may receive, and certainly to receive it without translation, is huge where you’re getting it from somebody who speaks your native language,” Shearer said.
For more information about PIQE, go to https://www.woodriverymca.org/programs/piqe-parent-institute-quality-education/.